Thirsty Middle East Is Exhausting Its Water Supply

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The Middle East has depleted its water reserves at a frightening
pace over the last several years, according to a new study.

From 2002 to 2009, the region lost enough water from groundwater,
soil, snowmelt and reservoirs to fill the entire
Dead Sea — about 117 million acre-feet (144 cubic
kilometers). The majority of that water loss comes from
aggressive pumping of groundwater.

The findings were published online Jan. 10 in the journal Water
Resources Research.

Sky scale

The team was using satellite data from NASA's Gravity Recovery
and Climate Experiment (GRACE) project, which measures the change
in mass on the Earth below it. The project's primary goal was to
track changes in ice sheets.

"GRACE is like a giant scale in the sky, it
responds to gravity changes, the satellites are perturbed and
they move around in their orbits due to changes in mass," said
study co-author James Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the
University of California, Irvine.

The twin satellites take advantage of the fact that gravity's tug
on a spot is proportional to its mass. And water is by far the
heaviest thing that changes on Earth, so gravity changes can
reveal how much water has been lost. [ 6
Weird Facts About Gravity ]

Famiglietti and his colleagues found that the Tigris Euphrates
Basin, which spans parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, lost an
average of 16 million acre-feet (20 cubic kilometers) a year
during the period of the study. By analyzing other data that
tracked other water levels, such as the amount of snowmelt and
reservoir levels in the region, the team concluded that most of
the depletion came from
pumping groundwater.

A drought
during that time period may have depleted reservoirs and
snowmelt, causing people to more aggressively pump groundwater,
Famiglietti told LiveScience.

The findings are even more worrisome, because
climate change is projected to reduce rainfall in the region,
causing even more water troubles, he said.

Improve efficiency

The vast depletion of groundwater could spell trouble in a region
that already has many conflicts over water. To prevent depletion,
the region needs to improve how efficiently they harness water.

Because 80 percent of the world's water usage is for agriculture,
employing water-sparing techniques like precision drip
irrigation, which aims water under the soil straight to a plant's
roots, could avert catastrophe, he said.

Tracking groundwater use is also essential, Famiglietti said.

"Groundwater use has historically not been monitored," he said.
"If we think of it as our money in the bank, we better keep track
of the account balance."